


help! i'm alive

by alpacas



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-11
Updated: 2019-05-11
Packaged: 2020-03-01 01:09:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18789964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alpacas/pseuds/alpacas
Summary: there are two stories nott tells.





	help! i'm alive

**Author's Note:**

> look! sometimes you just wanna write some angst.

She's not sleeping well lately.

Wakes in an unfamiliar bed, that's not new, the room large and empty and echoing around her. A lump of blankets and pillows, a human-sized bed, a boat, an island. A warmth at her back — at her front — her size. Cold feet. Yeza's feet are always so cold. Always have been. Lying on his back, usually. Has the habit of touching his face in his sleep — his knuckle pressed to his lips — his other hand reaching for her. She tucks herself against his shoulder. Rests her forehead to his arm and curls beneath the blankets, so only the crown of her head remains. She wakes up. She is a goblin, and Yeza is not Caleb.

Who is she?

 

 

There are two stories Nott tells Luke.

Tells herself, pretending it's him, holding her own hand, clutching a pebble in one of her pockets, clutching her worn scrap of fleece, matted and flat. Pretends its his hand.

Once upon a time there was a girl and a boy. The boy was brilliant and they opened a shop and got married and had a baby. The best baby in the world. The smartest and the cutest. And that baby was you!

The second story goes like this:

Once upon a time there was a silly, stupid goblin who wasn't good at anything.

Anything at all? Luke asks.

Anything at all.

 

 

Nott used to lie awake and remember. Close her eyes and picture the house and the shop. What was on the shelf beside the door? How many cupboards? What color were the curtains? Veth had curtains. A house. A little garden Yeza kept neat, medicinal plants, alchemical herbs, flowers he'd tend just for her. Daisies. Forget-me-nots. Veth always preferred common flowers.

Veth had four dresses. Veth had a box of treasures. Veth painted the bedroom blue and dripped paint onto the floors.

Nott wakes up next to Veth's husband and doesn't know why her limbs are still bony and green.

Nott wakes up and watches Yeza sleep and realizes: she'd forgotten. The way he worries his knuckles as he sleeps. The moles on his left wrist. The shape of his ear. She'd lost them. They are Veth's.

Nott has a rucksack full of trinkets and crumbs. She has a flask of cheap booze. She has sharp thin limbs and long pointed fingers and a mouth full of scrapes from biting her own cheeks.

When Nott sleeps, she sleeps soundly, curled up in a ball, her head on Caleb's ankle or thigh or tucked into his coat. Nott sneaks and laughs and fumbles for traps and shoots people. And casts spells. And walks through lava.

Veth drowns. Nott never enters the water.

 

 

She knows two stories.

Veth has Yeza. Veth has a house and a shop and a garden and Luke. Veth sleeps in a feather bed with a green quilt, curled up against her husband. Veth isn't pretty, but she has dresses and long hair and she makes do. Veth isn't smart, but she's a good helper, a good assistant, a good housekeeper. She makes do. She looks after them. Her family. She does. She did.

Nott has other things.

She's afraid she doesn't know how to talk to Yeza anymore. She pretends to be Veth. Pretends to be clean and nice and helpful. Pretends to be kind. To keep house. Almost cooks dinner, almost starts cleaning — catches herself. Remembers. Bites her cheeks and moves her ring of water-walking from one finger to another.

She's afraid she doesn't know how to talk to Caleb anymore. He calls her Veth now, and it makes something inside her go tight, twisted like her copper wire. Like he's saying to her: you're not Nott.

Which she isn't.

But also: which she is.

She misses watching Caleb play with his silver thread, misses sitting on their bed and watching him protect them. He knows so much she doesn't. He always kept her safe. Told her how to steal food first. How to trick people second. How to drink until you're brave. How to fight even when you're not.

Nott has Caleb but not Yeza. Veth has Yeza but not Caleb. Who does Nott pretending to be Veth have?

Which story is she?

 

 

Nott doesn't think about Luke. Not really. He's dim in her memory, and when Yeza starts talking about him, their boy — sharing excited a memory or a story, his first day of school, his first time helping brew a potion — her throat rises up into her mouth, she can't breathe, she scrapes her nails into her palms, she changes the subject, makes a joke, turns away, her head spinning.

He was a baby. They'd just barely weaned him. Just barely started talking about having another.

He's not this tall boy speaking full sentences, looking so much like his father. She talks to the boy in her head, the little giggling toddler, the quiet boy in her arms in a cage in the forest. Clinging to her. His body so tiny and cold.

She'd hold him in the goblin camp and tell him stories to distract him. Try to remind him. Mommy and Daddy will protect you no matter what. You. The most important boy in the whole wide world.

Once upon a time: a boy was born, and he was you.

Yeza tries to tell her how much Luke has grown, and she pushes away from the table with a laugh and a joke, her voice high, unseeing, unhearing. Why are you telling this to me? I don't want to know. I'm not Veth.

He watches aghast and doesn't follow — did she say that aloud? Or something else? Something worse? — and she finds herself in the washroom. Which is stupid. All that's here is water.

She wants someone to come in and tell her: it's okay. I love you. Here's who you are.

 

 

Nott wakes up next to Yeza and flinches and watches him snore.

Nott leans over Caleb's back in the library as Yeza tinkers behind them, and he smiles and calls her Veth.

Caleb and Yeza talk slowly, awkwardly, and she eavesdrops with her heart pounding.

Once upon a time, there was a girl who had a family she loved more than anything.

Which one is she?


End file.
